Finding a body

Cutlery said:

I don't know if he planned this or not, or how long he did.

I said I wasn't gonna get into shit, but basically - I don't think he faked his death and fucked off anywhere. There's really no reason to. It's not like he had a family, no wife, no kids, none of that. Just a single dude who played video games. In fact, he never even talked about any past or present relationships. My GF asked me when she first met him if he was gay -- no, don't think so, just didn't have an interest in women, or maybe was never shown any interest, I honestly don't know. So there's not much motivation there to end your life here and move off somewhere else. Near as I can tell from the communication with the sheriff (which, btw, fuck those guys...never talking to them again. Fucking shitbags. I asked for one goddamned thing, which was "Where have you looked so I can go different places and cover different ground?" and couldn't get any of them to talk to me. Fuck you, I'm done talking to you useless fuckers then), our gaming group was the only people he really talked to. This seems to be corroborated, because his supposed "friends" made a reddit post which was full of inaccuracies and the family didn't really have any good information for the news story either. Basically, there's a lot of details wrong on everything I have seen everywhere else from everyone else he knew about this. Maybe that's how the news works, I dunno, but it sure seems no one knew him very well, certainly not like I did.

He "retired" a couple years ago once he saw how bleak his future would be at the company he was at. What was to look forward to, sit on a fucking forklift for 30 years? He couldn't handle it. But, since he lived a pretty spartan lifestyle, had a condo with a pretty retardedly cheap mortgage, and because he made a fuckload of money in the few years he was there (north of 80k a year), he had plenty of money banked where he didn't have to work for awhile. How long does 50k in the bank last when your mortgage is $400? These are pretty realistic numbers for what the situation probably was. We would occasionally offer him job tips we'd seen, my GF told him she could get him in at the warehouse she worked at - decent starting wage, 8-5 M-F, no OT, no weekends, and he just shrugged his shoulders at it. The only reason that we could see for doing that was that he still had money saved up and didn't need to work, so we didn't think anything of it.

Turns out, he's outta money. 3 months behind on everything, credit card maxed, checking acct overdrawn. There was zero food in his house, not even a bottle of water. Nothing. Now, that's a pretty fucking silly reason to kill yourself - shit, you own a fucking condo, sell that, pay off the rest of the shit, get a job, and you're back on your feet in under a year. But, that's what we're looking at. Maybe he was just speedrunning life - worked for a few years, retired, then died. I dunno...but it sure seems he mliked out every last day he had on the planet. Ran it until the tank was on E and he couldn't handle it anymore. The thing that sucks is that every other guy at the table has been there before - we've all been piss fucking broke. Shit, there was a year my ex and I made 19k COMBINED. And we had a kid. We were fucking POOR. But the thing that kept us going is we had someone - either a spouse we were getting support from, or a child we needed to care for. So we muscled thru, fixed the shit, and crawled outta that hole. He had none of that. No one to work for. No one to be strong for. It's real easy to just think "Whelp, no one gives a shit, so I guess I'll go eat a 9 mill." Except we did give a shit. If the motherfucker had said ONE thing, to ANY of us, we couldda helped him outta this, and it wouldn't have been a big deal. I get it though - it's probably why he did it on Saturday game day. He couldn't look me in the eye knowing what he was about to do.

The one thing I'm super fucking grateful for happened about 6 months ago. He came over and said "Hey, I'm starting to feel like a piece of shit." "Why?" "I come over here every week, you are constantly throwing food on the grill for us and I never bring anything, so here, take some money" I threw it back at him and said "Absolutely fucking not, dude, keep your money. You're here every time I ask, you come over and help me out with so much shit. I would never have gotten that Black Walnut up the hill without you, let alone get the shit milled. You help me with literally everything I need help with, the bare minimum I can do is feed you every week and send you home with the leftovers." He said "alright" and took the money back and we never spoke of it again. I'm so fucking happy I did that, because maybe I bought a few more weeks with the dude by doing so. I'd never be able to live with myself if I had known he died outta money while I took $60 from him.

So no, I can't believe he faked his own death. He's got no reason to. He's running from nothing, from no one. The problems he had could just be solved by going back to work, but he couldn't stomach it for whatever reason. Maybe it all felt pointless - why the fuck spend the next 30 years doing shit he hates just to go home to an empty house? I don't know, and I'll never know. The only thing that I don't get is why he went to such lengths to not be found. Even if you think your life isn't worth living, and even if you don't wanna make a mess for anyone, how the fuck can you do this and not think that people won't be looking for you. He knew with his dying breath that I'd be out there looking for him. He probably didn't think it would be the same fucking day, but I'm sure he knew eventually enough pieces of the puzzle would come together. Just let us find you so we can get some peace, after you find the peace you were searching for.

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